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Welcome to my Polish blog! My Polish great grandpa was orphaned during the Chicago flu epidemic of 1918 & spent his life looking for all of his siblings. Some family stayed in Chicago & some returned to Poland. Some family was Catholic, & some are believed to be Jewish. I post the things I learn in efforts it may help someone else in their research. I also hope this blog helps me connect with others that know about the people I'm learning about. Digital images of records or links are put inside most postings so you can view records full screen. I encourage comments. Feel free to sign the guestbook, stating who you're looking for. Maybe we can all help each other out this way, because there are many challenges with Polish research. I hope you enjoy learning with me. And I hope to be taught more about my Polish heritage.I have added a few languages to this blog through Google translate. I hope that it may be accurate enough with the communication of ideas. Thanks! -Julie

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25 July 2010

Note: 3 Aug 2010. I did order the microfilm. I should see it 2-3 weeks. Then I will update this post.

Today I was looking on the PGSA website again. I saw something I had seen before, but a notation was added since I last looked at this information. So this web page shows Jozef Sanetra was born in Chicago, 25 Sep 1912. Jozef is pictured in the top right corner of my blog, standing in the doorway of a house he built for himself. He is listed with the middle name of Michal. This birth record is at Holy Trinity Church, in Chicago. It is located on film number 1703799, item 2, page 120, volume 10, enumeration #837. I will try to get this microfilm to get this actual record, because of it's unique notation. The index says Adam Sanetra was the father and Rosalie Wandzel was the mother. The note that stood out to me, I now have to find out what it means! It says under notes, "mom was Maslonka". So I started trying to think what this could mean. Could she have been married before she married Adam Sanetra? No, she was pretty young. So I went to recalculate how old she was when she married Adam Sanetra. She was only 14 and a half! So that was very young. Then I worried I had made a mistake on the dates. I looked at Rosalie's death certificate and our parish records and family letters again. They all show that Rosalie was born in Aug of 1885 and married Adam Sanetra in Feb 1900. I guess I just never did the math before, to realize she was so young! Rosalie died at age 33, having had 6 children. So Rosalie was born Wandzel, then was Sanetra from the time of marrying Adam in Feb 1900 to her death in Oct 1918. So then why would she be listed as Maslonka? and when? Her death certificates, her children and the parish records all said and knew her maiden name was Wandzel. (sometimes written as Vondzel).

I tried to brainstorm ideas with my mom and grandma. We know other people who have married this young, but it is much less common. Grandma asked what was going on politically, religiously then. My only theory that could make sense, is that I have been told the name Wandzel sounds Jewish. Whether it is or isn't wouldn't have mattered so much. What mattered is what people assumed. And assumptions often led to persecution if their name sounded Jewish. So could Rosalie have used the name Maslonka to sound more Catholic? Could she have married young, because marrying a man (Adam Sanetra) known to be Catholic with a Catholic sounding name offered protection? This is the only possible theory I can think of. If anyone has any other possible theory, please let me know. Right now, we know Rosalie Wandzel married Adam Sanetra in a Catholic church in Zablocie Poland. Her parents and grandparents names are listed on the registry record. We know the names of Rosalie's siblings, but that is all. So we do not know for sure yet whether Rosalie was born Jewish or Catholic. We just know for a fact that she married Adam in a Catholic church. I am still looking for Rosalie or her family on any record that would tell us their religion. I have found Wandzels from Zywiec and Zablocie on Concentration camp records. But that does not mean they are Jewish either. This is just all new information for me and I don't really know how to find records to prove religion yet, so I know where the rest of the family records are. Rosalie's family is not in the same parish records as Adam Sanetra's family. So was she in a different parish? Or was she another religion? I hope to know one way or the other some day. I did find someone with the name Wandzel from Zywiec, and his family was Catholic. But it looks like records can go either way for Rosalie Wandzel's family.

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Naturalization info help

See posting 18 Jul 2010 for links, explanations and JPEG image examples explaining how I have found naturalization records.

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Chicago Census Maps & Chicago street grid (address) changes

If you have an address, you can look up your family on the Census through Census maps. Which for immigrant names, is often an easier way to find families. See more on the posting 1 Oct 2009, or the tag "census maps".
Also, there were major changes to Chicago addresses in 1909 & 1911. See the posting for 1 Jan 2010.